Consultancy to Develop National Research Repository for Zambia

"UNICEF has now issued a Request for Proposals in order to select a supplier for the provisions of consultancy services to Develop National Research Repository BACKGROUND The Government of the Republic of Zambia is placing increasing emphasis on data and evidence for use in planning resource allocation and implementation of national development policies and programmes. This was evident in the development of the 8th National Development Plan and other downstream line nistry planning processes. The Ministry of National Development and Planning (MoFNP) uses evidence to set development priorities by identifying effective financing and implementation modalities to ensure achievement of intended development results Analysis of the country's research and evaluation ecosystem, however, reveals significant data gaps Ministry of Finance and Nations Planning with support by UNICEF hosted a stakeholder workshop in 2022 to identify and agree on gaps and solutions. One of the biggest gaps defied in the data and research ecosystem is non-accessibility of data and research outputs for decision making by policy makers and advocacy itutions. There is a lack of coordination and linkage among key research stakeholders as demonstrated by fragmentation in the flow of data and research and evaluation outputs in the knowledge ecosysteen. Stakeholers work in silos in the production and dissemination of evidence which leach to hoth the underumisation of already existing research and evaluation evidence, and the duplication of work. Further, while a few nammers have repestones that are open, there is currently no online platform to coordinate open access research outputs national level hence limiting accessibility of both data and research and evaluation products to users. As a result, we are recruiting an institutional contractor to condum a date and endence workflow, culminating in a research repository. Objective of Consultancy The overall objective of the consultancy is design and develop a web-based knowledge sharing platform that will leverage on existing institutional repositories to upload and share research up to enhance owledge dissemination and evidence-based decision-making in Zambia. To develop ZaRR, the institution will undertake a scoping exercise of the research environment in the country to ascertain key stakeholders in the research ecosystem, assess the types of research outputs and how they are disseminated, establish which institutions have existing repositories and make recommendations on how they can he coordinated to enhance research access and utilisation through a national research repository. The institution will also recommend administrative responsibilities of key institutions in ZARR, and conduct capacity building of the administrative staff identified."